Quick Beef Tomato Sauce with Spaghetti Squash

This Quick Beef Sauce with Spaghetti Squash is an easy recipe that lets you get dinner on the table fast during this busy season! I hesitated to share this because it’s so simple, but thought some of you might appreciate this quick idea.

Using a top quality jarred tomato sauce is the key to making a tasty sauce without any fuss. I really like Mezzetta’s Roasted Garlic & Caramelized Onions sauce. I find it’s well-seasoned and needs no “doctoring”. The ingredients are California plum tomatoes, imported olive oil, fresh onions, roasted garlic, fresh basil, sea salt, and spices. There’s no added sugar, no dehydrated vegetables, just good fresh ingredients.

I was able to cook the spaghetti squash very quickly with my Instant Pot. I was inspired to give it a try after reading Michelle Tam’s blog post on Nom Nom Paleo. Using the Manual setting, I set the time for 7 minutes. It took 13 minutes to get up to pressure, then 7 minutes under pressure, and less than a minute for a quick pressure release. So it took just twenty-one minutes to cook the squash. While the Instant Pot was doing its thing, I put the sauce together. Quick and easy!

What? You say you don’t have an Instant Pot and/or you’re afraid to attempt to cut the hard squash in half? Here are a couple of good alternatives for you.

You could roast spaghetti squash halves in the oven. It’s easy. I’ve used the same method that Chungah Rhee describes on her damndelicious.net blog. It works great but does involve cutting that hard squash in half.

Spaghetti squash does NOT taste like spaghetti. It’s squash. But it pairs very well with tomato sauce. Bob and I both enjoy it and it has become part of my regular rotation when I want to make a quick and easy meal.